Since the very first time a new retrovirus, finally named HIV, was announced as the cause of AIDS in 1984 by the American scientist Robert Gallo.
Besides that, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Perth Group leader, had written a non infectious oxidative theory, which was even under evaluation before Gallo's virus announcement.
theperthgroup.com/CONTINUUM/lookingback.html
by the time AIDS was diagnosed, I was aware of the biological and pathological effects induced by many agents (semen, nitrites, recreational drugs, Factor VIII, infectious agents and the drugs used to eradicate them) to which the patients belonging to the AIDS risk groups were exposed. More importantly all these agents showed a common property, they were oxidising agents. This led me to put forward the non-infectious theory of AIDS which claimed that the primary risk factors for AIDS were the oxidising agents to which the individuals were exposed.
While the manuscript discussing this theory (in which neither HTLV-I nor Montagnier's retrovirus were mentioned) was in the hands of a few colleagues for evaluation, Gallo claimed to have proven that HTLV-III was the cause of AIDS. I was advised to re-write the manuscript to take account of these claims. The revised manuscript, which was twice rejected by Nature and initially by Medical Hypotheses, was later accepted by the latter journal.
http://theperthgroup.com/OTHER/ENVCommentary.pdf
Our group’s involvement in AIDS began in 1981 when two diseases, Kaposi ’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, began appearing at an alarming rate in young, homosexual men in the United States . Prior to the AIDS era one of us (Eleni Papadopulos -Eleopulos [EPE] ) had developed a general theory of cellular functioning which we thought might go a long way to explaining the pathogenesis of AIDS.
However, following the claim of the discovery of a retrovirus by Montagnier in 1983, and its subsequent rediscovery by Gallo in 1984, this theory did not gain traction. This is why we have spent the past three decades challenging the HIV theory . This has become a necessary strategy to furthering our own theory of AIDS pathogenesis. Our efforts in this regard are reflected in our publications: several papers in the peer-reviewed s cientific literature and material published in the popular press and on the internet.
The rise of the internet has in no small way made up for the increasing difficulty of publishing contrarian points of view. In regard to the latter, editors of scientific and medical journals are in a difficult situation. Peer reviewers (peer ≡ HIV protagonist) do not take kindly to anti-HIV-theory manuscripts and editors need to be sensitive to the commercial realities of publishing, which include relationships with proprietors and advertisers.
